The invention relates to a brush for gingival massage and cleaning teeth, comprising a bristle carrier with a handle and on the bristle carrier individual or bundlewise fixed plastic bristles.
Nowadays oral hygiene not only consists of cleaning the teeth, but also gingival massage to prevent gingivitis, periodontitis, etc. Conventional toothbrushes, no matter whether they are operated manually or electrically, admittedly adequately fulfil the tooth cleaning function, but not the gingival massaging function, particularly if both effects are to be obtained on the same movement path. Thus, for cleaning teeth, particularly for cleaning interdental spaces, the bristle ends are particularly effective, but are frequently too aggressive for gingival massage, particularly if they are not perfectly rounded or have already become flattened due to use. However, for gingival massage the pressure and movement path must be chosen in such a way that the bristles bend round and give a type of stroking massage with their circumferential surface. However, in this position they are far less effective for tooth cleaning and are unfit for interdental space cleaning.
Therefore an effective gingival massage is only possible with special instruments, whose working surface is generally of rubber-like materials and having a burl-like profiling (GB 398 919, U.S. Pat. No. 1,892,068). These instruments are in turn completely unsuitable for cleaning teeth. Thus, for a complete oral hygiene two operations are necessary and possibly even two different instruments must be used. This is tiresome and consequently gingival massaging instruments have not acquired practical significance.
In addition, toothbrushes are known, whose bristle facing is adapted to the different aims when cleaning the teeth and massaging the gingiva. Such a toothbrush has a comparatively hard, central facing and more flexible massaging bristles in the outer area. This necessarily constitutes a compromise, the allocation of the different bristle areas to their associated treatment spheres, i.e. tooth or gingiva, is not readily possible on the part of the user. In addition, this compromise always benefits one action to the detriment of the other.
A conventional tooth brush follows this principle (DE-U-295 01 338) with which pile threads are mounted to the bristle carrier in addition to the usual linear bristles. Pile threads are loose textile fibers which are curled by thermal shrinkage. These pile threads cannot effect cleaning as can bristles.